Now as well as climb, instruct, rant and rave, I also spend part of my time studying an MSc in Applied Sports Science, in particular I have spent a considerable amount of time looking at Sport Psychology, especially research that looks at climbing. There is one piece of recent research in particular that looked at personality and climbing. The work was by a Bangor University masters student and supervisor Tim Woodman.
Whilst they looked at was whether Narcissism had any effects on performance in a climbing task when comparing leading versus seconding. The argument being that a leading challenge has greater potential for self enhancement in the eyes of others and would therefore have a different effect for climbers higher in Narcissism. If you like it allows for a bigger ego boost than when seconding. One of the interesting interaction that the research has shown is that people higher in the narcissists trait recorded a higher ‘rate of perceived mental exertion’ in the leading task than the seconding task, when compared to people lower in the narcissist trait.
It is important to remember that this research looked at making two groups through median splits of data, so its not say narcissist versus non-narcissist, just a group of people higher in the trait than another group. However, given this research it could possible be argued that a narcissist, making a first ascent in front of a camera where the potential for self enhancement is great would lead to that individual experiencing a higher rate of perceived mental exertion and therefore give a route a higher grade.
Now I have not tested this hypothesis, I am just stretching research that I have seen. It would be a reasonable easy hypothesis to test though, as all you’d need is an ungraded route in a climbing wall, and a selection of climbers to grade it, and then test those individuals for levels of narcissism. It might be an interesting undergraduate research.